Since Lion will incorporate a lot of 'instant load' and apps always running, it's going to need a lot of memory, isn't it? Would 2GB now be the bare minimum for RAM? SL was 1GB, but that didn't exactly speed along on 1GB. I'd guess 2GB as that is the least RAM you can now buy from Apple.

I think 2 GB will be the minimum to run Lion, due to the fact that Lion only runs on intel macs, and all intel mac's support 2 GB's of RAM

If that were the case, SL would have required 2GB of RAM because it is Intel only. I'm going to assume that they leave the minimum requirement at 1 GB of RAM, why would they release a computer (MBA) less than a year before Lion ships, that would only ship with the bare minimum requirements as standard??? It's bad business and will piss a lot of consumers off; which will inevitably lead to bad press.

I'm wondering if the cut-off in Lion is going to be more to do with VRAM. Those original MacBooks with shared VRAM might chug along slowly given what we saw of the graphics effects in everyday use of Lion.

If that were the case, SL would have required 2GB of RAM because it is Intel only. I'm going to assume that they leave the minimum requirement at 1 GB of RAM, why would they release a computer (MBA) less than a year before Lion ships, that would only ship with the bare minimum requirements as standard??? It's bad business and will piss a lot of consumers off; which will inevitably lead to bad press.

-Don

The thing is that now the MBAs WILL be able to run Lion. Since every current Mac has minimum RAM of 2GB+, I think it makes sense.

SL is a RAM hog. There I said it. Apple has to do MAJOR RAM management optimization in oder to match Windows (as much as I am not fond of it) excellent RAM handling.

My fear is tho, that they are thinking that everybody will get a SSD to drive Lion and forget how bad RAM management/paging in OS X is.

My guess it won’t be more 1 GB RAM recommended. But as always it’S never accurate.

__________________„Integrated Intel graphics chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You'd have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac Mini [..]” - Apple.com

SL is a RAM hog. There I said it. Apple has to do MAJOR RAM management optimization in oder to match Windows (as much as I am not fond of it) excellent RAM handling.

Apple's track record for writing small effecient code is worse then Micosofts. Leopard was a memory hog, SL was not better. Looking at safari, aperture and apple's other apps and I'd say the odds that apple will shrink Lion's memory requirements is about nill

No, if Lion saves the state of every app it's going to use a heck of a lot more RAM.

saving the state of an app uses a heck of a lot less ram then leaving it running

just looking at what I have running on my mac right now, iTunes (with nothing playing), iCal, Address Book, iPhoto, Pages...none of those actually NEED to be running, they're not doing anything. So if instead their state was just saved, it'd save memory

If that were the case, SL would have required 2GB of RAM because it is Intel only. I'm going to assume that they leave the minimum requirement at 1 GB of RAM, why would they release a computer (MBA) less than a year before Lion ships, that would only ship with the bare minimum requirements as standard??? It's bad business and will piss a lot of consumers off; which will inevitably lead to bad press.

I am gonna say 1GB for minimum to just run it. However, once you start loading applications and running them on background.. then 2GB. If you start opening multiple pages and programs, then it will be better off with 4GB. iMacs will most likely move up to 8GB rams and most of laptops will be 4GB standard.